Dr. John Roueche credits his success to many mentors: His father who fought in World War II. His mother who worked two jobs. His nanny who taught him the value of diversity and inclusion in a segregated, working-class town in North Carolina. His grandfather who taught him to read confidently at an early age by encouraging him to recite scripture in church. His history teacher who didn’t let him drop out of college when the textile mill where he worked closed down.
These mentors “didn’t have any learning objectives or anticipated outcomes,” Roueche says. From first grade on, “I had a tremendous head start, not because of kindergarten or learning objectives or anything, but just because of caring, loving people who just spent time with [me]. My whole career has been blessed that way.”
Years later, Roueche looks back on a legacy characterized by his mentorship of others, a story detailed in the newly published book Vision for Opportunity: John Roueche and the Community College Movement.
The book describes his accomplishments: He led the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin), the preeminent program of its kind, for 42 years. He started the Roueche Graduate Center at the National American University and established the Center for Community College Leadership at Kansas State University, which he continues to run. He’s also the author of 39 books and over 175 articles and chapters, and he has been a speaker at more than 1,300 colleges and universities across the country.
While packed with facts, Vision for Opportunity isn’t a biography, says Dr. Martha Ellis, the book’s editor, nor was it intended to be. Ellis serves as interim managing director at the Charles A. Dana Center at UT-Austin and is also a professor of practice at UT-Austin. Each chapter is written by a different author — friends, colleagues, students, even his children — to capture Roueche’s influence on different communities, colleges and individuals.
The project was about “getting the impact he has made on community colleges from different voices in the field on paper,” Ellis says. “He’s made such an impact on the community college movement as a whole, not only leaders but actually students’ lives and others. As I was doing interviews and as I was working through the concept of the book, it really melded together that his life definitely impacted the direction that he took. But the stories of his life were [also] intertwined in all of his leadership … philosophies that he had. You couldn’t separate the two.”
Authors’ accounts of how Roueche’s life intersected with theirs are written in a tone that can only be described as glowing:
